StEPPFoS project (2024 - 2027)
Authors
From January 2024 until December 2027, ECDPM will be involved in the StEPPFoS project, with seventeen other research institutes and organisations in Europe and Africa. The project aims to strengthen the evidence base of agriculture and food systems policies within the Africa-Europe partnership.
About the project
Food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (FNSSA) are key development concerns across Africa, highlighting the urgent need for policy action and international cooperation. This urgency is emphasised by FNSSA's prominence on the policy agendas of many African countries and its prominent role in the AU-EU partnership.
FNSSA also emerged as the first common priority research and innovation area as part of the AU-EU High-Level Policy Dialogue on science, technology, and innovation, leading to the establishment of the FNSSA Partnership and the Pan-African Network for Economic Analysis of Policies (PANAP), which serves as a platform for facilitating evidence-based policy interventions in support of FNSSA objectives.
PANAP, as a network, conducts research on economic analysis of policies focusing on Africa’s food systems and supporting its sustainable transition. It is co-hosted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the African Union Commission’s Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy, and Sustainable Environment (ARBE) and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).
In alignment with the goal of achieving FNSSA, the project ‘Strengthening Evidence-Based Policy Practice for Sustainable Food Systems under the EU-AU Partnership’ (StEPPFoS) seeks to contribute to the FNSSA 10-year roadmap and the global transition to sustainable food systems by implementing activities that link the PANAP network to the FNSSA partnership.
Through this project, we aim to strengthen the capacities of stakeholders, enhance the science-policy interface that supports decision-making processes in Africa’s food systems, as well as promote scientific support within policy development and expand and strengthen the PANAP network to support African countries with economic analysis of food systems-related policies.
StEPPFoS will run for 48 months addressing various aspects of the FNSSA and PANAP's objectives and employing a range of methods to deliver them, including capacity building, stakeholder engagement, participatory monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
Funding, timeline and partners
The StEPPFoS project is financed through the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme and will run from 1 January 2024 until 31 December 2027. The project involves eighteen research institutes and organisations in Europe and Africa and is led by the Forum For Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).
- Forum For Agricultural Research in Africa – FARA (Ghana)
- The Registered Trustees Of The Association For Strengthening Agricultural Research In Eastern And Central Africa – ASARECA (Uganda)
- West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) (Senegal)
- Council For Scientific And Industrial Research – CSIR-GH (Ghana)
- European Centre for Development Policy Management – ECDPM (Netherlands)
- Food Agriculture And Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network – FANRPAN (South Africa)
- Regional Universities Forum For Capacity Building In Agriculture – RUFORUM (Uganda)
- Universität Hohenheim (Germany)
- European Alliance on Agricultural Knowledge for Development Agrinatura (Belgium)
- Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis KIPPRA (Kenya)
- Stichting Wageningen Research – WR (Netherlands)
- African Forum For Agricultural Advisory Services – AFAAS (Uganda)
- Universita Ca’ Foscari Venezia – UNIVE (Italy)
- Universite Felix Houphouet Boigny (Benin)
- E-Science European Infrastructure For Biodiversity And Ecosystem Research – LifeWatch ERIC (Spain)
- Eastern Africa Farmers’ Federation Society – EAFF (Kenya)
- The Association of Commonwealth Universities (UK)
- The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission – EC-JRC (EU)
ECDPM’s contribution
ECDPM will leverage its expertise in stakeholder engagement, capacity building and policy analysis to contribute to the project.
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More information
For questions about the project, visit our project website or contact Daniel Adeniyi at dade@ecdpm.org. For communications or media enquiries, get in touch with Isabell Wutz at iw@ecdpm.org.
